Peter Sculthorpe was born in Launceston, Tasmania, on 29 April 1929, and began piano lessons, and also to compose music, at an early age. By the time of his fiftieth birthday his musical identity had become almost synonymous with the Australian landscape in the public perception. Yet when he was growing up in the lace 1930s, the search for a strong Australian identity within the art music community was only just beginning. Art music in Australia in the early part of the twentieth century was a product of the country's colonial past, and its non-indigenous musicians and composers remained heavily under the influence of late 19'h century European Romanticism and British Pastoralism. Audiences were generally conservative in their tastes and although a great deal of early 20th century music did appear on concert programs in Australia at this time it was often neo-classical in style and the more modernist works of Arnold Schoenberg and others of the Second Viennese School did not find an appreciative audience, and would not do so until the 1960s. The music of Australian composers often reflected the impact of these more conservative European and British influences and any distinctive.style of music that reflected a more intimate or representative relationship with the Australian landscape, it's people, and their experience had not yet been successfully attempted much less consolidated. The perception that there was a need for such a development in music had been highlighted by Melbourne musicologist Henry Tate (1873-1926) who, writing in his article '.Australian Musical Possibilities' published 'in 1924, had suggested that " ... we await the advent of a school of composers who will succeed in producing music which will be recognisable as national ... " Tate was referring to identifiable nationalist musical styles that had evolved over many years and were evident in many European countries with substantial historical precedents. To achieve this type of recognisable ntional musical identity in Australia, a country whose non-indigenous population was derived from that of many different countries and whose history was relatively brief, T:u:e recommended the investigation of bird-calls and of indigenous melodies and rhythms as potential. musical resources. He advocated the view that " ... Australia must have composers who will study their own country, and aim to achieve in their music an inherent distinction that will arouse interest in it as Australian music."
A similar search for Australian identity emerged in literary circles in the mid-1930s with the establishment of the Jindyworobak movement. The Jindyworobaks were a group of poets and writers who recognised that the basis of a recognisably 'Australian' literary culture lay in an overt expression of a relationship with not only the landscape but also the history and traditions of both the indigenous and non-indigenous populations. The aims of the movement are exemplified by the work of its founder, the poet Rex lngarnells (1913-195 5). lngarnells first used the term Jindyworobak, an Aboriginal word meaning 'to annex,. to join'3 , because it implied one of the movements primary goals, that of uniting the indigenous and non-indigenous populations of Australia. Other poets, such as Flexmore Hudson (1913-1988) and Ian Mudie (1911-1976), followed lngamells' lead and their poetry espouses the Jindyworobak's desire for expressing overt connections to the landscape, indigenous people and their culture, and the environment.
Inevitably, the essence of the Jindyworobak movement, ·if not its complete ideology, had an effect on the other art forms and in music some composers began to reference the landscape and Australian history in their work. Clive Douglas (1903-1977), for example, wrote the operetta Bush Legend in 1938, a work he revised and retitled Kaditcha (A Bush Legend) in 1958, and the ballet scene, Corroboree in 1939. He also wrote two symphonic tone poems, Carwoola (1939) and Sturt 1829 (1952), while his Symphony No. 2 of 1956 was subtitled 'Namatjira' after the well-known Aboriginal painter. Douglas had a strong interest in the Australian landscape and in Aboriginal culture, and he also collected indigenous melodies sometimes adapting them for use in his compositions. His music and his adaptations of Aboriginal melodies remained, however, stylistically within the conventions of late 19"' century European art music. Similarly, John Antill (1904- 1986), strongly influenced by childhood memories of witnessing Aboriginal orroboree ceremonies, completed the orchestral ballet music, Corroboree, in 1946. Although there is no reference to Aboriginal melody in the work, an Aboriginal instrument, the bullroarer, is used to add to the evocative nature of the music. The work's focus on rhythm has sometimes drawn comparisons with Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, although Corroboree was written before Stravinsky's ballet music had been performed in Australia . .Once again, although Corroboree is intended to be Australian by virtue of its subject matter, Antill's music remains stylistically within the European musical tradition. The work, however, quickly became the most well-known composition by an Australian composer in the first half of the 20th century, receiving recognition internationally due to the support of Eugene Goossens, who conducted performances of the music (if not the ballet) in several cities around the world.
For Sculthorpe, growing up in Tasmania meant that he was isolated from the mainland of Australia and, even more so from Europe and Britain, which suggests his initial knowledge of these developments was limited but his engagement with the debate surrounding an Australian identity in music intensified when he became a student at the Conservatorium of Music at the University of Melbourne in 1947. At the Conservatorium he studied harmony, countetpoint and composition with James A. Steele and A. E. H. Nickson neither of whom, although they engendered in Sculthorpe a love for the music of Palestrina, had a lasting impact on the development of his mature compositional style. Of greater influence were the opportunities to hear a wider range of music and musical styles than he had previously been able to access. The music of Gustav Mahler and Ernest Bloch were early favourites, while upon hearing· music written by Adelaide-born composer Margaret Sutherland (1897-1984) for the first time in 1948 he remarked, " ... I felt this was my first encounter with a truly original and Australian voice."4 Much of his own music was heavily influenced by the large amount of British music, Frederick Delius and others, that he was listening to at this time, and is reflected in the use of titles such as To Meadows, Elegy, Pastorale, Country Dance, and Falling Leaves for either complete works or individual movements within works. Significantly, fellow student James Penberthy (1917-1999) wrote a ballet score entitled Euroka in 1947 that was inspired by Aboriginal legends. No doubt influenced by this, Scu!thorpe wrote his own Aboriginal Legend (1947), a piano work whose title reflected his gradual recognition of the need to acknowledge indigenous culture as a step towards the creation of an Australian style, although the music itself had no connection with that of Aboriginal Australia. Similarly, the opportunity to orchestrate, as class exercises, two indigenous melodies resulted in his Two Aboriginal Songs (1949). The two melodies, Maranoa Lullaby and Warrego Lament, were originally collected by H.G. Lethbridge. They were subsequently arranged for SATB voices by Arthur S. Loam and published in 1937. This marks the first time Sculthorpe had used indigenous melodies, albeit for a class exercise, and while he refused to quote melodies like these in his own music for many years it is worth noting that Maranoa Lullaby, in particular, would re-emerge fifty years later as the primary source material for Cello Dreaming (1999) and Requiem (2004). Although Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone system of composition had been enormously influential, if not entirely popular with audiences, in Europe, it was not taught at the Conservatorium during Sculthorpe's time there. He did, however, obtain a book written by Ernest Krenek that outlined the technique. While he did experiment with twelve-tone composition over the next few years, Sculthorpe ultimately rejected it as being unsuitable for a composer living and working in Australia.
In the years following his graduation from the Conservatorium in 1951, Sculthorpe spent considerable time investigating and collecting resources that documented Aboriginal music in Tasmania and also on collating a dictionary of Aboriginal words and their meanings. Although any thought of quoting Aboriginal music within his own wete not considered viable at this point, by the time of the Sonatina (1954) and The Loneliness of Bunjil (1954), Aboriginal legends were at least supplying an extra-musical narrative for Sculthorpe's music.
While acknowledging that he could not entirely remove himself from the influence of European musical traditions, Sculthorpe gradually developed a style based on the abandonment of certain key elements of that music. The Sonatina, in particular, exemplifies the nascent use of particular techniques that form the basis for his mature compositional style. In the Sonatina he focused on aspects of repetition without reliance
on significant forms of motivic · or harmonic development, and on the formation of musical structure by the accumulation of disparate blocks of material. The success of the Sonatina, which was selected for performance at the ISCM Festival at Baden-Baden in 1955, led to the composition of Irkanda I (1955) for solo violin, a work which further exemplifies this approach. The opportunity to study at Oxford, beginning in 1958, only intensified his disassociation with European and British music, and increased his belief that there was little of interest or worth in that music for an Australian composer intent on creating a distinctively Australian voice. While at Oxford Scu!thorpe studied with Egon Wellesz (1885-1974) and Edmund Rubbra (1901-1986) although, as with Steele and Nickson at Melbourne Conservatorium, neither had a lasting impact on the development of Sculthorpe's mature compositional style; in this respect, he was intent on finding his own idiosyncratic voice.
Upon his return to Australia in 1961, Sculthorpe continued his stylistic development and reaffirmed his intention to focus on the evocation of the Australian landscape as a primary motivation for his music. By the late 1960s he had broadened the scope of his influences to include references to the music of Bali and Japan, cultures geographically close to Australia, whose organisational techniques enabled him to enhance his philosophical and musical distance from Europe. By 1974, Sculthorpe had begun to use Aboriginal music as source material and an increasing number of works from this time onwards rely heavily on· the use indigenous melody from both within Australia and the islands to the north. The importance of the investigation of Aboriginal music in any attempt to create an Australian musical identity had, of course, been suggested by Henry Tate in 1924. Similarly, Tate had recommended the use of a major scale with a flattened 2"' degree as one that might be most appropriate for Australian composers, and that " .... if the sixth degree of the scale be flattened in sympathy, a delightful scale with a major third results, abounding in symmetrical harmony and entrancing possibilities ... "5 As will be demonstrated in this book, Sculthorpe had always shown a predilection for the use of the semitone, especially in melodic formations, and for the use of modes that contained a flattened 2"' degree: The Sng of Tailtnama (197 4) is a particularly potent example of this practice. Even in later works, despite the fact that there is frequently much less dissonance than can be found in earlier works, Sculthorpe almost always emphasises the flattened 2"' and flattened 6"' degrees of the scale at cadence points. These particular chromaticisms create the harmonic tension that requires a form of resolution, provided by the cadence, that ultimately drives the music forward. These particular connections between Sculthorpe's style and Tate's article suggest that, where ochers may have not seen the possibilities inherent in Tate's advice, Sculthorpe may have decided they were at least worth some form of investigation.
Since 1965, Peter Sculthorpe has become one of Australia's most well-known and well-respected composers, and has been the recipient of numerous awards in recognition of his contribution to contemporary Australian composition. As has been suggested, his music has become synonymous with the Australian landscape and with the evocation of an Australian musical identity that is immediately identifiable. In this regard, however, so identifiable is his musical language with respect to the Australian landscape, that it has largely mitigated any form of imitation by other composers. As such, his compositional style has not produced a 'national' school of like-minded composers as advocated by Henry Tate. Over time, the goals outlined by Tate have, it can be argued, become less important for Australian composers, many of whom no longer seek to represent a national identity through their music. Certainly many composers now refuse to engage with the concept of the evocation of the landscape as a means for creating a sense of Australian identity. The reasons for this are many and are beyond the scope of this current book. Suffice it to say that, for Sculthorpe, the issue of Australian identity was, and indeed remains, the prime motivation for his music, and the aim of this book is to provide an examination of the most important of his original compositions that exemplify his intentions. It is not intended as a biography of Peter Sculthorpe and reference to his life, in general, is made only when it directly impacts upon the creation of the music. Instead, the aim is to provide an analytical guide to the key works written within a variety of instrumental and vocal genres, and to identify the characteristic manner with which Sculthorpe composes these works. Sculthorpe's professional career began in the 1950s, and the basis for his compositional style is formed during those years. Throughout his career, Sculthorpe investigated, and then often integrated into his music, a large variety of compositional techniques and musical influences from many different sources. The changes in musical style wrought by these techniques and influences created distinct periods in his career where one or more of these influences are most apparent. Thus, his music is often categorised as being in the 'Irkanda style, from 1954 to 1965; the 'Sun Music' style, from 1965 to 1971; while the quotation of Aboriginal and Japanese resources begins in the early 1970s and continues through to the early 1980s. From the mid-1980s onwards, Sculthorpe does not quote from Japanese sources but focuses on the use of either quotations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island melodies, or the use of his own melodies that are derived from the general characteristics of that indigenous music. It must be said, however, that the basic elements of his 'lrkanda style are almost always· present in some form or another in all of his music, and thus his distinctive compositional voice remains remarkably consistent throughout his career. This has as much to do with the ability to manipulate musical materials in ways that become personal mannerisms, as it does with establishing a musical aesthetic that remains inviolate.
This book, then, provides an overview of his music in order to ascertain how the compositional voice is incorporated into works of often quite different styles. As such, it is intended as a resource for teachers, students, composers, and performers, as well as music-lovers in general, who might wish to !mow more about Sculthorpe's methods for composing particular works. The individual chapters are each devotd to a specific musical genre, with discussion provided for the most important works within each category. There is no attempt to be comprehensive in the analyses provided for each work, which would require a much larger volume in order to do justice to the material. Rather, it addresses the key elements of Sculthorpe's technique, and suggests how they support and sustain his musical aesthetic. There is particular emphasis given to the string quartets and the music for orchestra, and all of the main compositions in these genres are discussed. The chapters on the piano music, chamber music, vocal music and concerti also discuss key works within those genres. The large-scale. music theatre and operatic works, such as Rites of Passage (1972) and Quiros (1982),· and the scores for various films including Burke and Wills (1987), are not directly analysed. Rather, the focus is on those works that are readily available in both published score and a variety of recorded formats. In this way, it is hoped that readers who wish to continue their investigation of Sculthorpe's music can do so via easily-accessible materials. By examining a large cross section of Sculthorpe's output, it is intended that an overview of his principal compositional methods will emerge, and that it will also. become clear how the strict perpetuation of these methods, even through periods of stylistic change, has made Sculthorpe's work so easily identifiable and so clearly related to Australia.
By John Peterson